FUCKING USELESS! NO protocol was written! The mentors and senior researchers need to be fired! If you don't know what stroke research is for; GET THE HELL OUT!
Rigid ankle exoskeletons for rehabilitation: a scoping review of sensor integration, control, and clinical outcomes
Abstract
Background
Rigid ankle exoskeletons are increasingly investigated for gait rehabilitation and assistance because they can deliver repeatable ankle support, resistance, or movement guidance through load-bearing mechanical structures. Their translational value, however, depends on the integration of mechanical architecture, sensing, control, ergonomic alignment, safety, and clinically meaningful evaluation. This scoping review maps recent rehabilitation-oriented rigid ankle exoskeleton research and examines how engineering design choices are connected to biomechanical and clinical outcomes.
Methods
A PRISMA-ScR-guided scoping review was conducted across PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and IEEE Xplore for English-language studies published between 2015 and 2025. The review included rigid ankle exoskeleton studies relevant to rehabilitation or gait assistance, including simulation and design studies, benchtop or mechanical validation, healthy-subject experiments, feasibility studies, and patient-based investigations. From 4318 initial records, 53 studies met the final inclusion criteria. Extracted data were charted according to mechanical architecture, actuator type, sensor modality, control strategy, ergonomic features, evidence level, and reported biomechanical or clinical outcomes.
Results
Across the 53 included studies, the most common online sensors were force-, torque-, load-, or strain-based sensors (22/53), followed by foot-contact, plantar-pressure, or force-sensitive resistor (FSR) sensors (21/53), and encoder or joint-angle sensors (19/53), reflecting a predominant reliance on mechanical interaction sensing and gait-event detection. Control approaches ranged from mechanically passive and model-based methods to event-driven, intention-driven, and adaptive strategies, with clinically oriented studies more commonly employing relatively simple timing- or event-based architectures. Ergonomically, most devices adopted simplified sagittal-plane designs: 43/53 described or modeled a 1-DOF ankle architecture; 46/53 were coded as anatomically aligned and 7/53 as self-aligning. Twenty-two of the 53 included studies involved patient populations, including mixed cohorts comprising both patients and unimpaired participants. These studies reported preliminary improvements in outcomes including walking ability, ankle range of motion, balance, gait speed, and metabolic cost. However, the clinical evidence was dominated by pilot, feasibility, and case-based studies, with only one randomized controlled trial identified.
Conclusions
Rigid ankle exoskeleton research now requires stronger integration between sensing, control, ergonomics, and clinical evaluation. Future systems should not only detect gait events accurately, but also maintain reliable state estimation under variable walking conditions, reduce calibration demands, and apply adaptive control within clear safety limits. Design evaluation should also move beyond actuation performance by systematically reporting alignment, comfort, usability, and interaction safety. Although current studies support technical feasibility, stronger clinical translation will require larger, longer-term patient studies with standardized biomechanical, functional, and safety outcomes.
Trial registration: A formal review protocol was not preregistered. The mapping framework and extraction rules were established internally by the research team prior to data collection.
